epic fail

People use the word epic a lot, to refer to something very good. 

It is the successor of awesome.

And I suppose it isn't going to matter that they're diluting its meaning because those sorts of adjectives aren't being used seriously much anyway.

Grand theory has been discredited. Grand narratives are a pejorative.

Grand pianos take up too much space. Grandparents aren't grander parents.

There aren't undiscovered territories to discover. I could do a trek or something,

but that's because I don't know, not because humankind doesn't.

And anyway, if I'm out of mobile range for a few days, people start panicking about me, or I about them.

If I commit a grand crime passionel I can't flee the country with the name of my love on my lips because I won't get a passport.

And there's enough troubles at the border already without unbalanced lovers queuing up to question their Line of Control. 

Oh, and there's no solving murders of international import on the Trans-Siberian railway either, because the train takes forty days from start to finish and I'll never get that many days off work.

I don't want to be nostalgic about the days before I was born, that's my parents' job.

Nor to long for TB to consume me while I breathe sea air and try to get used to my impending death. And let's not go into the plumbing and things.

And as consolation there's still racism, to deport immigrants with, and imperialism, to keep your car going,

And sinocentrism, because the -centrisms were getting too North-heavy. And Americanism, which should've been an ideology but instead stands for something so uninformed that only someone utterly internationally privileged could've thought so, and yet people can organise their words around it. 

There are still epic battles on ESPN every third Saturday in season, and some civilisation-sized observation waiting

in every expert's larynx for the right note to be hit in international affairs.  

Everybody's little drama is a big deal as we're all equal, and those who capitalise on it are an offence to humanism, which in turn only an ecological ignoramus could've come up with.

Not that I have an alternate future in mind, but discoveries are all to the scientific,

As battle used to be to the swift—or perhaps the strong—and the rest of us

are busy looking backwards and forwards in time trying to avoid human failings 

before we cross the road.

right to privacy

Earth as well as moon tonight are blinded by the city's smog. 

On a balcony suspended mid-cloud in the grey half-light,
you should have been with me. 

It is so rare, this wall for the eyes; for lovers,

this angel with the flaming sword at Eden's gate.

The life lived a bit more than it used to be

My life was a useful thing altogether, amounting to
A couple of very nice birthday cards, three or four
Clearly-written exam papers and an interesting idea or two
A year. The poetry was marginalia.
What's to be worried over, if you insist,
Is the narrowing field of vision, the cramped, busy writing,
Too many words, too little feeling,
And too much space beside for poetry to fill up.
In that chasm between words and verge it simply drowns.

Spanish poor.

Late last night we saw an old lady in an angloindian dress, carrying a plastic bag
like a handbag, poke fastidiously at some garbage bags beside a footpath.
Today, walking up to the church I was attacked by some herbs and a lady
handed me one, reminded me of aunty Molly and proceeded to bless me thoroughly.
I don't know what she said because it was Spanish.
Then she leaned back on her left hip and asked me to bring out the cash.
I said I had none and smiled at her helpfully. She grimaced, took back her investment
and left me with the smell of myrtle on my hands.
On the cobbled street corners old men with dirty beards are slouching
with dogs in dirty jackets and a can out ahead of them.
A man came to our lunch table, left a lighter and a note saying
his wife had an awful disease and he no job and they two kids.
He put one set at each table, came back after a bit and told us
we could keep the lighter, but we politely refused so, practically, he took it.
We felt like benevolent ex-colonials. My father took a poverty picture,
We said don't be gruesome, he said they do it all the time. My mother melted neither for
worst nor most skilful, transnationally consistent and no post-colonial ego at all.
Down another street is a woman all in black, broken voice and heart together, wailing.
Fifty metres on, a chirpy fellow with an accordion, on a steel chair, making us feel better.
My sister gave him some money to patronise the arts.
There are impersonators in the squares and busy night streets—the Angel of mercy,
and Grim reaper are favorites—and my father stood a long time figuring out a levitator,
refusing to see what makes him trick. We never saw any children beg.
Walking back at night, we passed a man looking through dustbins like a buffet.
The next morning a Bangladeshi immigrant will tell us that with so many
thousand euros paid to be here, he has no intention of going back.

When did passion, the noun, become sexual?

a woman,
face mapped with lines,
is stamping her feet
clutching her belly,
anguished,
concentrating,
pace pounding like blood
reaching out to life
and triumphantly snatching her train up out of its reach
to snap her fingers in its face—

and some people on Tripadvisor say this show's not your moneys worth;
they don't have a single couple performing.

I cannot write tragic poetry any more.

It is as though I were in a forest

—or so I imagine, my acquaintance with forests being so slight—

And I thought it was a Belle-Dame-Sans-Merci sort of place

But then the sun shone somewhere and— lo and behold!

It's all winking lights and accommodating shadows after all.

Well, perhaps not that sunny. The ground is squishy and

There are glass shards dotting the slope where people

Used the place in accord with how dark it had seemed,

Making it darker. I sigh in irony, which itself is overdone.

If we deal in malobservations and miscommunications—

Which we do—we are likely to find that trees are best kept

To a certain height, age, density; their gatherings limited

To five or more in a public place, their branches trimmed,

Undergrowth regularly cleared, all in the interest that 

People will use them right. 

And of course, with an arrogance I can fairly appropriate to our lot,

We—that is to say, I—draw analogies where every damn thing stands for human.

at home

I drag my feet over doing when at home. I only 

lap up happy endings, sometimes knit, pee frequently;

By eight or so, I'm berating myself on another day wasted.

What else? I spend time talking, a bit a day.

My impatience held in a vice-like grip, I try explain;

When it escapes, I am savage or escape.

I've no wisdom to defend this with.

Family, they itch in your bones—

Try to be aloof, or strategize, or just let them be,

But it still matters enough to fight.

Or to lie, to evade the non-negotiable.

Because they are not just the Opposition.

I know why they resist, I know why I must, should, will listen,

I know why the whole damn thing's so bloody hard.

They know too, and so we're every day angrier,

Always shouting, never leaving,

Never thinking violence without thinking regret.

—Don't get me wrong: we make each other miserable.

But in a quicksand/together-forever sort of way.